" I can buy my home with an unfinished bonus room or unfinished flooring and finish it myself later"
If you are a professional tradesman, this may be true, but watch out! I ran into a couple who had purchased a home from a very good, reliable builder. It had an unfinished bonus room, which, they later hired someone to finish. The result was a very nice home downstairs, but the opposite in the the bonus room and the hall leading to it. The Sheetrock was improperly installed, so it bowed in places. The paint, flooring, door facings were not done in a professional manner. I knew all of this, as I showed it after it went on the market.
They were talking to me about a new home and told me of their disaster. The home ended up being on the market for a prolonged time and they ended up taking an offer so low that they would have done better if they had never finished the bonus room. Needless to say, they will not make that mistake again.
Another family decided to pull up their carpets in their home and stain the slab, seeing that their carpets were worn out. Bad mistake! Carpets are installed using tack strips, which are nailed to the slab. When the tack strips are pulled up, they leave holes in the concrete, where the nails were. Guess what? These areas will not take the stain the way the rest of the floor will, so the holes are accented. Most residential slabs in our are are poured with 3000psi concrete. In order to take a stain properly, the concrete needs to be 3500psi or more. How do you know what you have? You don't! The result is that you get a stain that is uneven and won't last long. If the stain is not sealed properly, it will begin to peel off almost immediately, and the owner will have no idea what happened
I like to save money as much as anyone, but there are many shortcuts that cost much more than they save.
once again, thanks for reading my rants! Steve Houck
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